Suddenly Miss Isabel dropped her shears and sponge, and sat down on the old gray stone bench, beside which the lilies grew white and stately; they were not as white as Miss Isabel's face as she looked at Margery.
"What is this, Margery?" she asked.
"Mr. Dean wrote it," began Margery, very much frightened. "He is going away, and we can't bear it, and he wants you to be friends, and so do we, for then he would stay, and he has told you all about it, so that you'll be nice to him, as you are to everybody else, even—even worms," said Margery, inspired to this comparison by looking down at the lilies' roots. "Please, please don't be angry with him any more, Miss Isabel. You're the nicest of anybody in the whole world, except mamma, and he's the next nicest."
Miss Isabel was sobbing.
"Go back, dear Margery," she whispered. "You must go away now."
Margery was dreadfully frightened. She knelt at Miss Isabel's feet, and pulled her hands from before her face, peering under a lily to look at her.
"Are you angry?" she implored. "Only tell me that; are you angry?"
"Yes," said Miss Isabel, suddenly laughing in a queer sobbing way; "why didn't you bring this letter before?"
And Margery went away, pondering over this incomprehensible answer. As she walked slowly down the street she saw Trix and Amy coming to meet her. Trix's face was tragic; her cheeks were crimson, her lips set, her brow dark, and her eyes full of dumb misery. Amy's comfortable, rosy little countenance was stamped with sympathetic sorrow. Margery saw that something dreadful must have happened.
"What's the matter?" she called out, as soon as they could hear, running to receive the answer.